1
An hour for her hair? When I rewatched that episode, I decided it would be a major breach of reality if she ever showed up in it again without at least two assistants and most of a morning to prepare it.

2
She certainly must have had quite a retinue with her on that liner.
Which makes her stowing away all the more amazing. Not only did she have to sneak onto Bentenmaru without getting caught, she had to give the slip to all her maids.

As for staying at the school,
with Gruelle officially in the yacht club, the Odette II presents interesting possibilities for vacation trips home. We know it's got good armor and an up-to-date electronic-warfare system; perhaps someone "forgot" to remove the weapons as well, and they're just locked down in ways that surely no schoolgirls could ever circumvent.

The Bentenmaru's crew didn't seem too concerned with
the three ships escorting the Princess' cruiser, even if things got dicey, (some comment was made to the effect that the Bentenmaru was "vastly more powerful"), so they might have even been able to handle four corbacks -- but the larger battleship would likely have been a more formidable danger. And the five ships acting together...that probably would have turned into a bad day. Which makes me wonder if Pirate ships might be exempted from armament limitations generally imposed by the GE.

Posted by: Dave Young at March 06, 2012 06:52 PM (ZAk0Z)

6
Expanding on Dave's comment and pushing into some other things I've thinking about for a while, the entire set up with the letters of marque
seems to me like a bit of a political compromise. The GE doesn't allow piracy, but they do respect local laws and customs, so as part of the annexation a compromise is reached: Privateers are allowed but are essentially only grandfathered in. New letters of marque cannot be issued. Old ones can be renewed, but only in restrictive circumstances (bloodlines, requirement for actual piracy shortly after renewal) so as to make them slowly disappear. The Sea of Morningstar government wants to keep them around for their military utility though, so they do a lot to assist in successful renewals (government escort while Marika is renewing, lax requirement for what is considered "piracy" to include what is essentially a tourist show).

It all seems like a dance where the Sea of Morningstar is trying to keep military forces that it would otherwise be denied and the GE is trying to eliminate them without being too obvious and risking revolt in the rest of the empire (I imagine a great deal of their ability to maintain their empire is due to them treating their subject systems fairly enough).

The privateers
are an excess military ability which fell through the cracks. But they're also politically useful because they represent "plausible deniability". For instance, when those Serenity ships were incoming, Sea of the Morningstar sent Bentenmaru instead of the Stellar Military because Bentenmaru isn't quite official. If it had been the Stellar Military which directly observed Serenity ships firing their weapons, they would have had to open fire themselves and it would have gotten ugly. Bentenmaru didn't carry that obligation, and Marika was able to defuse the situation without bloodshed.

Likewise, the operation that Gruier hired Bentenmaru for couldn't really be done by the Serenity military on her behalf, I suspect. But hiring what amount to mercenaries to take care of it is something where everyone can pretend and look the other way.

I wouldn't be surprised if even the Galactic Empire uses privateers that way once in a while. Their status as being legal-but-only-just-barely is handy in situations where a government needs to do something but doesn't want to take official responsibility for it.

While I'm here, thought I'd mention that I'm going back to "Gruier" as spelling of her name. When she's introduced to her class in the middle school, her name was written on the chalk board both in Japanese and in Roman letters, and it was spelled Gruier. It wasn't a subtitle, it's in the actual show graphics. So it's the official spelling, and we're stuck with it.

9
By the way, about that "being too obvious" part of it:
I wonder if the assassin in ep 1, and the Lightning 11, are both working for the Galactic Empire?

I can believe that they're trying to eliminate the pirates. And at the time of a generational turnover in pirate captaincy, there's a distinct vulnerability which maybe, maybe, some organization in the GE is trying to use. After all, if they'd managed to kill Marika, then Bentenmaru's letter of marque would have expired and that would be one less privateer to worry about.

Of course if, as I suspect, there's a revolution brewing and the pirates are part of it, and if the GE suspects, then that's even more of a reason to do it.

10
Of course if my theory is correct, I want the show to spend at least a few minutes on the person who negotiated in that part of the agreement--it seems he or she was one heck of a smooth talker...

A couple of ideas on the grander politics:

A direct revolution could be afoot, but since the population doesn't seem terribly oppressed, I'm not so sure. I'm leaning more towards the GE having over-expanded when in capable hands, but after a couple of generations of rot is now having a hard time maintaining its control over all of its territory. In that scenario, the ones responsible for the attempts on Marika would more likely be the old regional rivals jockeying for position for when the GE starts falling apart in that area.

Of course a lot of it is probably just me finding that to be a more interesting scenario than the other, which seems more conventional. As a result, I'm probably wrong...

Posted by: benzeen at March 06, 2012 09:49 PM (R9i5E)

11
I just found it odd that the main battery had the CAPABILITY of being interfaced with the Coms.

12
benzeen: I don't recall the exact wording right off hand, but
the voiceover at the beginning of the last episode strongly gave the impression that at least some elements in Serenity (i.e., the Princess) were seeking more freedom, so I tend to think Steven's cut on this is probably the right one. And things like "freedom" tend to be very subjective. The tax that got the whole Boston Tea Party thing going were minescule compared to what we routinely pay today. Also, there may be oppresive aspects of GE governance that we simply haven't seen yet. But, ya know, whichever way it goes, it looks to be interesting.

I just found it odd that the main battery had the CAPABILITY of being interfaced with the Coms.

Actually that makes sense.

Tight beam, secure communications are vital and the ships battery likely
has the power to punch through any jamming. The guns are obviously
transmitters anyway and could provide redundancy to the regular
communication array in the event of damage, or provide additional narrow
beam transmitters when a 'party line' is needed.

Also, for a really long range transmission the main battery at high
power would be a useful, (albeit STL) backup, perhaps sending an
important message across interplanetary distances at greater range than
it could conceivably damage something.

2
It looks even worse in light of recent astronomical discoveries. Sure, we haven't found an Earth-type planet yet, but its looking more and more like its just a matter of time and refinements in search technique. And we have, IIRC, found a whole bunch of giant planets in the blue zone that could conceivably have inhabitable moons.

October 04, 2010

I am completely out of it today. Two naps, more caffeine than usual, and I feel like I weigh about half a ton. I can't write.

But there is an idea that occurred to me the other day about Phil Foglio's "Buck Godot" stories that won't leave me alone. So here goes:

Early in the canon (maybe the story about the teleporter?) we learn about the law machines. They're sapient robots who, one day, appeared on all human worlds simultaneously and implemented The Law. Nobody knows where they came from, or why the human race was the only species they picked on in this way.

There were 21 (IIRC) elements to the Law, and each would come into force when a certain (unspecified) proportion of the population voted for it. But you could only vote "yes" and you could only vote once. When the required number of yes-votes had accumulated, that law went into effect and henceforth was enforced by the law machines.

The deal about New Hong Kong was that when the law machines arrived there, someone hacked the voting process and change it so that it read, "There is no law on New Hong Kong." It immediately accumulated an overwhelming number of yes votes, and though the law machines found the hacker and did something with him, they didn't change it. That's why New Hong Kong has such a wild-west feel to it. It's the only world in Humanspace where The Law doesn't apply.

Now... in Gallimaufrey we learn that for the last several hundred years, the human race has been the custodian of the Winslow, as part of a deal with the Prime Mover. In exchange, the Prime Mover guaranteed that the human race would not go extinct.

What occurred to me was that the Law Machines were the way that the Prime Mover fulfilled his side of the bargain. He's the one who created them and sent them to humanity, and their implementation of The Law had the effect of suppressing the most pernicious tendencies of the human race, which otherwise might have led to self-destruction. If I've got the chronology right, it seems that they showed up just about the time that humanity took over as guardians of the Winslow.

And the reason the Law Machines didn't override what happened on New Hong Kong was that their mission only required that enough humans survive to represent a viable breeding stock. If New Hong Kong did eventually self-destruct, it was OK as long as other human worlds continued to exist.

Not too impressive an idea, is it? But when ideas like this seize me, the only way I can get them out of my head is to write them down. And I don't have the energy to write anything else today.

1
Interesting - I hadn't thought of a possible connection between the Winslow and the Law Machines, since they were (IIRC) introduced in different story arcs. It seems plausible, though preventing self-destruction by itself doesn't preclude an external source of extinction, such as war.

3
Right, but The Law wasn't enforced on the universe as a whole, just on human worlds. (Though not just against humans!)

It's not enough. Law-bots may have done a good job of keeping people from killing each other, but they were clearly inadequate against an external threat, such as attack by another species... or, say, against a rogue bio-weapon.

That said, it's definitely got the right flavor to it. Prime Mover comes up with an elegant solution, implements it, quits worrying about the details. And yet with holes in it... well, we know that the Prime Mover is not nearly as omniscient as he's cracked up to be.

4
And while it doesn't prevent the external threats you mentioned, there's no reason that the Prime Mover couldn't have implemented the Law Bots specifically to deal with within-species problems, while he plans on dealing with outside-species threats in other ways.

I have no idea whether this is a unique idea or very widespread, or even whether it's canon. But I thought I'd share it with you, just in case you might find it amusing.

The Law Machines came out of no where and imposed the Law on all human worlds. No one knows who sent them, or what their ultimate mission is.

If I understand the chronology, they showed up about the time humanity became guardians of the Winslow.

I think it was the Prime Mover who sent them. And I think that the Law Machines are the primary means by which the Prime Mover prevented the human race from becoming extinct, because The Law suppressed the worse instincts and inclinations of the human race, which would otherwise have led to self-destruction.

And the reason why the Law Machines permitted the Law to be avoided on New Hong Kong was that their mission didn't require saving every single human world. All they needed was to protect an adequate breeding stock.

7
In one of the original Starblaze edition graphic novels for Buck, a vicious trade war between two human factions that had resulted in heavy civilian casualties was generally agreed upon as the reason the Law Machines arrived--the first of two "Great Checks" upon Humanity.

The other Check, IIRC, was Lord Thezmothete himself, decreeing a version of the Prime Directive would be obeyed, as far as trade was concerned, to prevent over-exploitation of younger races.

September 26, 2010

Asobi ni Iku Yo -- comments on the Cathean ship

We hypothesize that the Catheans have faster-than-light travel but they don't have faster-than-light sensors. There are only two ways to find out what's going on in a given star system: look at it with telescopes (with the inevitable centuries or millenia latency and poor visibility), or visit it to look around.

The Cathean mother ship is on an exploration mission. They move the mother-ship to an unexplored section of the galaxy, and then the mother ship dumps out a whole bunch of one-person scouts, that being the Rulos and her sisters. The scouts are capable of short-distance star travel (maybe 20 light years) but aren't capable of traveling galactic distances. The pilots of those ships (including Eris) all work for Chaika, commander of the exploration team and one of the top officers of the ship.

Each scout is assigned (one?) previously unexplored star system with instructions to check the place out. Does it have planets? What kind of orbits are they in? Are any of the planets habitable? Do any of them have life? How evolutionarily advanced is it? And prize of all prizes, do any of them have intelligent life? How advanced? Have they discovered stone tools yet?

Those advanced scouts are elite-of-the-elite. If they do make contact with a tool-using alien race, that very first contact is critical and can set the pattern for all future interactions. Get it wrong, and friendly relations may become impossible.

So the scouts are heavily trained, and are selected for certain characteristics, which Eris displays in spades. (And no, I'm not referring to her breasts.) Eris is smart, kind, even-tempered, happy, brave, resourceful, personable, even charismatic. She is exactly what you'd want a scout to be to give you the best possible chance for successful first contact.

Part of being a scout is that if you do luck out, you get to be the ambassador. This is an honor. It's a duty. It's also a considerable risk, as this series makes clear.

Eris hit the jackpot. The system she was assigned to explore contained a planet inhabited by a technological civilization which was within a couple of hundred years of developing star travel; it's the prize of all prizes for this kind of exploration mission.

Especially because Eris had reported her strong suspicion that the Doggies had been on Earth for quite a while, and that they were behind the first attempt to kidnap and kill Eris herself. Hardly any wonder that Captain Kuune decided to move the mother ship to the Sol system when they received the first reports from Eris. She clearly was going to need the resources and support of the ship. (No, they didn't show up because they wanted to taste braised beef. That was a joke.)

Ubu in comments mentions just how nice Eris seems to be. I don't think there's any reason to believe that this is a racial characteristic of the Catheans, though they do in general trend that way. It's a selected characteristic of the crew of the ship, and in particular it's a selected characteristic of first-contact specialists like Eris.

Most scouts won't ever find a planet like Earth, but all of them are ready to do so if luck favors them, and they're all trained for that mission. Any of the rest of the people working for Chaika would have been about the same, because anyone who isn't wouldn't qualify for that assignment.

Eris certainly understands the gravity of her situation, and the burden of responsibility on her is heavy. But she handles pressure well. And again, I think that's the result of selection. Likely they test for it, and those who don't handle the pressure don't get that job.

I'm thinking of a contemporary earth equivalent: submarine service in the US Navy. Crew for subs are recruited from the rest of the navy, and they're all volunteers. There are ten times as many volunteers as there are positions to fill, and they undergo really very strict testing to make sure that only the very best get in.

One test I've seen film of involves putting some of the men in a chamber full of pipes and valves, and having high pressure water leaks develop. This is something that can happen in a real submarine, and if you don't handle it well the sub could be lost. So the test is very realistic: it's loud, it's cold, the water pressure is very high, and by all accounts it's terrifying. Some men who go through it panic and start screaming and try to escape instead of dealing with the leaks. Obviously those don't pass the test.

How many billions of Catheans are there? How many volunteer for this kind of mission? Millions, maybe? Only the very best of the best make it through, and those are the ones we're seeing. Hardly any wonder they're impressive as hell.

The mission is a complex one. The Catheans are trying to make a good first impression on Earth, obviously. They're also trying to find out the real deep truth about what kind of people the humans are, and that's at least as important, and probably even more difficult. (And they're trying to avoid having the Doggies derail the whole process.)

Doing a knowledge-dump from the local library was a valuable part of that, and you have to believe that as soon as Eris transmitted all that information to the ship that a team of specialists on board began reading and evaluating it. But direct observation of how humans react to the Catheans, and direct observation of humans in daily life, is also immensely valuable and that's one of the areas where Eris shines. Close observation of three particular humans has been another aspect of the process, and the Catheans have learned a lot from Kio, Manami, and Aoi.

Eris has made mistakes. It's inevitable that there will be some misunderstandings (the swimsuits) but she hasn't made any that seriously jeopardized the mission. And all through the series, what becomes clear is that Eris (and Chaika, and Kuune, and Melwyn) are tremendously competent at their jobs.

Title of the show notwithstanding, they are not there to have fun. They are having fun, but that's not the mission.

1
Along these lines, "asobi ni iku" doesn't necessarily mean "to go to play", in the English sense of the word. It could be visiting a friend for the afternoon, going out sightseeing, any sort of "casual" excursion. But there's also another, less-common meaning for the verb asobu: "to study abroad".

September 24, 2010

Strike Witches 2 -- lithium batteries

The whole business of witches sometimes using up all their magic and recovering the next day, and sometimes really using up their magic and never being able to use it again? It occurred to me last night that it's like how lithiium batteries work.

No battery I'm familiar with has a battleshort or equivalent, but I think most batteries for military radios are nickel-hydride.

Generators, on the other hand, all have a battleshort. This overrides the overheat and low oil pressure interlocks. It's for exactly the reason you talk about--sometimes, the lights just have to stay on.

What's fun is having a driver who doesn't understand what the battleshort is for and turning it on during training. "But sir, the generator doesn't start without that switch on!" *sigh*

Posted by: CatCube at September 24, 2010 05:58 PM (Te0W1)

2
Of course, if you misuse a lithium battery in just the right way... it catches fire.

Speaking of batteries and magic power and suchwhat, an obvious implication of something we saw in the last episode finally struck me (cuz I'm slow that way.) Spoilage:

We saw that the Neuroi were able to use Sakamoto's magic to generate shields -- a lot of 'em, and powerful ones -- long after her power was supposedly exhausted. The obvious takeaway is that a Neuroi core is able to channel its power through a witch to activate her inherent magic abilities. Well, okay...duh. This makes me wonder, though -- if the "Friendly Faction" of the Neuroi eventually win out and make peace with Earth, would they be able/willing to supply miniature cores to older witches to enable them to once again utilize their abilities. That would be quite a point in their favor in peace negotiations. More immediately, since they've already had contact with Miyafuji, might they seek her out with such an offer to gain her trust and assistance. Contrariwise, might the "Hostile Faction" now start trying to kidnap witches to use their powers offensively. Wild eyed speculation, granted...but...???

August 17, 2010

Strike Witches -- how it ends?

Man, when I come down with Engineer's Disease, I get it bad. Let's put some pieces together, shall we?

1. Mysterious diagrams left behind by Dr. Miyafuji.2. A tendency of the writers to deliberately "rhyme" with the first series.3. In the first series, Akagi flew.4. Yamato is coming in from Fuso by sea.

What do I see coming? How about this? An amazing device which can be mounted in Yamato, which when powered by a very strong witch (guess who?), gives the entire ship the ability to fly, and gives it a mondo shield. And in the end, Yamato will directly attack the new Neuroi nest from the air using its legendary 18" guns.

Whatcha think?

UPDATE: Let's overload. After Yamato wins against the nest over Venezia, there will appear a small nest which will, for the third time, send down a witch-shaped neuroi in hopes of negotiating. And it will be Sakamoto who deals with it, and this time negotiations will work -- and that will really end the war. The Neuroi will be royally freaked by the humans sailing 65,000 ton pieces of steel around in the air and decide we're not worth conquering.

2
If they do go that way, the Yamato could be the "cooperative" 11-person battle machine you postulated earlier

ME-262+ jet engine movement, with Shirley and Barkhorn as the "motors"Elia piloting, but Yoshika handles the shields because 65,000 tons of steel can't dodge everything (or there are multiple attackers). Lucchini for the inevitable ramming attack, per Avatar.Perrine handles close-in defense with her electrical attacks (multiple attacker scenario).Sanya handles targeting (she's the one with radar, right?) The other four girls "amp" the turret firepower.

3
Sorry, forgot to add: Alternate version, only two girls handle turrets: one on fore, one aft, while Wilcke is in overall command and Sakamoto... well, she's Sakamoto. Probably standing on the very tip of the bow and whacking Neuroi with her sword.

August 14, 2010

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

So if you toss in a reference to something and do camera closeups of it in the first episode, then it absolutely must be important, albeit not necessarily to appear again by ep 3.

In Strike Witches 2, we've clearly got an example of that. It's the mysterious letter that Yoshika received in the first episode. In plot terms it served to get Yoshika to visit the Navy base, to learn about the disaster that happened to the 504th, to meet Sakamoto again, to steal a striker and chase the flying boat, and to end up in Romagna to rejoin the war. All well and good, but definitely not all there is to it.

What I'm assuming is that he developed some sort of war-winning weapon. For mysterious reasons he sent pieces of the schematics to a bunch of people, including his daughter. That eventually all the pieces will surface and be collected at the weapons lab in Japan, who will build the device.

And... though it can win the war, it will require a witch as an operator who has far more power than your average witch. In other words, it won't work unless Yoshika runs it. She's the only one who can.

Alternatively, it will be a multi-crew weapon, requiring fully 11 witches to operate it (just by coincidence). But I'm leaning towards the former.

The other thing is that it will have to be based on something that really existed in the war, or might have.

The first choice that springs to mind is the Ohka, but there's no way the writers would use that. To require Yoshika to commit suicide in order to win the war is out of the question. This isn't that kind of show.

I think I know what it's going to be. Near the end of the war, a U-boat was sent on a mission to Japan. It delivered the plans for the ME-262, plus example hardware. It didn't turn out to make any difference. Japan was never able to build their own version, in our timeline.

We've seen the Me-262 appearing in this series, but it was buggy. What if Dr. Miyafuji had access to early plans of the Karlsland effort, and figured out what was wrong? What if all those mysterious plans are for a Japanese jet-striker, one that doesn't have the bugs of the Karlsland version? Barkhorn demonstrated the potential of the jet-striker, before it nearly killed her. A working one with reduced magic consumption could be a war-changer.

And what if Yoshika defeats the nest that conquered Venezia while flying it? Anyone buy that? (Alternatively, what if everyone in the squadron gets re-equipped with them?)

Another "gun" that's been hanging on the wall is the fact that Yoshika's raw magical power is far greater than anyone else's. They mentioned it again a couple of times in the first two episodes of this series. Once was the tech in the hanger when Yoshika powered up the striker, and another was when Yoshika used her shield to protect the flying boat and Hijikata was stunned by how large and strong the shield was.

They kept hinting about her power level in the first series, too, and I was really frustrated that in the end nothing came of it. I think this time it will.

To some extent, that was the logical result of the nature of the war by thaat point.

American air defense had gotten so good that making normal air attacks against the Allied fleet was pretty much suicide anyway. The logic behind the Kamikazes was that they were on a one-way trip regardless, but if they accepted that ahead of time and determined to die in a ramming attack, they at least had a better chance of scoring a hit on the enemy.

And once you get to that point, then it's only one small step further to something like the Ohka, or the Kaiten. (To the credit of the guy who thought up that idea, he piloted the first one.)

But yeah, in some ways it's sickening. When you study WWII you can see how everyone did a slippery-slope in a lot of regards, getting to the point (small step by small step) by the end of the war of routinely doing things which five years before would have been considered horrifying and unacceptable. Things like mass incendiary attacks on enemy cities. In 1940, no one in the US would have imagined that just five years later there would be a deliberate attempt to kill a hundred thousand enemy civilians in a single night -- yet it happened.

That's sickening, too. (No, I am not playing the moral-equivalence game here. OK?)

5
Honestly, I think it was more a case of the various aggressor nations having set bad precedents earlier in the war. Germany bombed Rotterdam, they bombed a lot of military targets in Britain, and they attempted to bomb the ever-loving heck out of London; even if you were against the idea of area bombing of civilians in abstract, clearly it was legitimate as a reprisal against the Germans. (The Japanese didn't shy away from bombing cities themselves - Nanking, for example, though that's not what people remember.)

There were other areas in which the Allies were prepared to answer tit for tat, but the Germans never got around to tit. Churchill had promised Stalin that the use of poison gas would be reciprocated against Germany, and the UK had significant stocks of the stuff against just such an eventuality, but neither side ever resorted to gas.

Unrestricted submarine warfare had the same pattern. Initially it was something that the US was opposed to - but by the time the US was involved in the war, it was clearly a valid tactic to use against the Axis.

I'd never thought of the use of suicide attack vehicles as a direct response to increased AA effectiveness of US ships (though you're right, that's when they introduced the proximity-fuse shell, correct?) The histories I've seen usually chalked it up to a dramatic fall in the average flight experience of Japanese aviators - neither service had a sufficient training program to replace losses at anything like the rate of attrition that Japan suffered. Of course, maybe it's a little from column A, a little from column B?

It's clear, though, that the Japanese view of surrender (i.e. "don't") affected the attitudes of US troops, and it would be weird if it didn't also affect the command as well...

Some of it was the proximity fuse. A lot of it was the introduction of the F6F plus the sheer number of flight decks (resulting from America's shipyards).

Japanese pilot inexperience was another factor, and a lot of the credit for that goes to American submarines, because of the effectiveness of the blockade (once the bugs got worked out of the Mark XIV torpedo). Japan stopped giving their pilots an adequate amount of air time during training because Japan could no longer afford the fuel.

The point is that the Battle of the Philippine Sea showed what it was going to be like for the rest of the war. Better than 75% of the Japanese pilots who participated in that battle were lost, and it was only going to get worse.

If three quarters of your pilots and planes are going to be lost anyway, then you may as well accept it. Sending the planes out without enough fuel to return had the added benefit of saving precious petroleum, as well.

So by the time of the Philippine invasion, the new Japanese doctrine was in place. HMAS Australia was first to feel the bite, but far from the last.

By the way, there was some precedent. There were cases earlier in the war where Japanese planes had hit American ships. Yorktown was hit by a plane at Midway, for example, and it did a lot more damage than an ordinary bomb hit would have.

Anyway, the logic of it really does make sense, in a weird sort of way: If your pilot is going to die anyway, then if he flies his plane into an enemy ship he'll do more damage. And if he's going to be doing that anyway, then why not give him a custom ship which is faster when it's flying and more destructive on impact? And then you get the Ohka.

Fortunately for the Americans, it had the huge drawback of short range, which meant that there was a chance to shoot down the ferry bomber before that point.

8
If you look at the sortie results of the Ohka on its wiki page, it pretty much paints the picture. Most attacks resulted in few, if any, of the Betty bombers carrying them returning, with no hits reported by the Allies on those days. The Bettys should have been able to stay out of 5" range during the attack runs, so they were most likely shot down by planes.

Ohkas launched from shore installations with small rocket motors would probably have been much nastier against the final invasion fleet, if it had happened. The Navy had a valid reason for wanting to blockade, rather than invade.

The Betties were shot down by American CAP. Radar spotted them coming in, plenty far enough away to permit intercept.

This was after the advent of the Kamikazes, and the Americans had become plenty jittery about incoming Japanese aircraft no matter what they were. Anything with wings and meatballs was gonna get taken out, as far from the fleet as possible. And American picket destroyers were going to spot them a long way away. (Admiral Spruance was a careful man.)

By that point in the war, most American CVs carried about 75% Hellcats and 25% Avengers, while some carriers were 100% Hellcats. It had been learned the hard way that there was no substitute for swarms of fighters, and that mix was practical because the F6F could also carry a 1000 pound bomb or a half dozen rockets. Even when there were no enemy aircraft, the Hellcats could provide bombing support for the ground forces.

And that meant there were plenty of American fighters for those kinds of air battles.

10
It's my understanding that the reason the American CAP was effective in stopping the Bettys on Ohka runs was that the Okha had a very short range, meaning the Betty had to launch within the CAP coverage.

There are plenty of anecdotes about pilots of just about any nation in the war choosing to deliberately crash a damaged aircraft into a target. If you've realized you're not going to survive, choosing to take someone else with you is a logical next step.

And there's little difference between the Japanese behavior and most of the other major combatants when it comes to those desperate last days of the war (or days that may potentially have been the last days) aside from the fact that the Japanese declared outright that theirs were suicide missions, which is inevitable given that their biggest threat at the time was naval instead of land based. Both the Germans and the Russians issued 'Not One Step Back' orders for their units to hold position regardless of the situation, which were effectively suicide orders, and sending a 60 year old Home Guardsman with an obsolete rifle and an improvised grenade to fight the German army "on the beaches... on the landing grounds", etc., would have been suicide as well.

Posted by: Civilis at August 15, 2010 03:00 AM (MrKDq)

11
In the closing months of the European war, Germany trained a special force of pilots to ram Allied bombers in mid-air. It was not intended as a 100% suicide solution, as they were trained to hit the plane along the top, to break it's back. They expected the casualties to be 50%. The aim was to get the allies to break off the air bombing for six weeks, so they could get the ME-262's into production.

Out of 140+ attempts, the first day they tried it, only two succeeded.in ramming and returning, and the damage wasn't enough to force the Allies to break off.. The plan was immediately abandoned.

I hate to disagree with our host, but that isn't the case. The closest thing to a kamikaze attack (either intentional or accidental) to occur during the Battle of Midway was actually executed by a USAAF plane.

One of the B-26s that made torpedo runs early on June 4th nearly turned the Akagi's bridge crew (including Adm. Nagumo himself) into a hood ornament, but narrowly missed. Nobody is sure if it was a conscious decision to crash, or if the controls were shot away.

1
Going under the spoiler tag
It may be significant that Hiroshi does not appear in the OP, but a much taller blond guy does. It's a brief appearance, and in such a manner as to suggest he is an opponent, not ally. So... either Hiroshi is the bad guy under shape-changing magic, or it's his older brother, and Hiroshi is just an extraordinarily gifted liar and agent provocateur. For the moment, Fujiko is Sai's direct foil, and is an "evil girl" -- but I think she's the red herring we're supposed to suspect. It hasn't captured my attention the way Railgun did, but I'm really liking this show, and have re-watched episodes 2 and 3 a couple of times. It's fun in a an almost-but-not-quite-out-of-control way, thanks to good pacing.

Another thing: since its origin is a light novel I'm suspecting that several pieces are going to fit together at the end, such as the lecture about mana, the fate of Fujiko's older brother, Keina's bird, and the war from 100 years ago. Also, everyone is assuming that Sai, as demon king, would bring a reign of terror. He could also be a benign king that keeps other demons in check--and the difference in his destiny may lie in the girls, of course.

He has tremendous power, and the clear destiny of developing far more. But he also clearly has free will and the ability to choose what he'll do with that power.

Part of why I expect what I said is that it fits with the kind of story telling I'm seeing, which is to say that it's uninspired and formulaic. "Hiding in plain sight" is the standard way of doing this.

3
On the other hand, it's far better than waiting until episode 10 to introduce the big bad, like too many manga-based anime do.

One of the things I'm liking about this show is that the feel also hearkens back to Maburaho, in that we have an entire school of magical teens, and magic is everywhere -- though it developed the secondary characters better for the first few episodes, I think. Before it turned into dreck, that is.

Is she a ditz, or is she crazy like a fox? When Korone revealed the truth about the drug, Kena didn't seem surprised or shocked. Did she already know? Did she redirect the drug deliberately to foil Fujiko?

Sai himself wondered about that. But it'll take time to find out. The other possibility is that Kena really did think it was a friendship drug, and expected it to make everyone stop fighting. And as to why she wasn't shocked, maybe she's too silly. Or maybe it was an act.

If we're looking for another illuminati, maybe she's it. Junko is thought to be the leader of the good team, but maybe it's really Kena.

Maybe she's really powerful and capable. Why wasn't she even slightly harmed when Sai let loose his nuke in ep 2? She was right there at ground zero, and ended up at the bottom of that crater, yet her clothes weren't even slightly singed. Junko, on the other hand, was down and needed healing by Korone. Maybe Kena didn't get hurt because she was able to protect herself. (If so, she would be the only one around strong enough to do so.)

Korone knows things, and Korone actively cooperates with Kena and follows her orders. Why would Korone do that?

Like Hiroshi, maybe Kena is playing a part. Maybe what we're really seeing is a big chess game between Kena and Hiroshi, each trying to recruit Sai for their respective teams. He's the prize; whichever team gets him pretty much wins... whatever it is they're competing for.

I don't think that Kena is the "childhood friend" who is herself in love with Sai. Reason is, she's trying to set Sai up with Junko. If she were the stereotyped "childhood friend" then she'd be just as jealous of Junko as of Fujiko, but she doesn't seem to be jealous at all, of anyone. To the extent that she's foiling Fujiko's plans, it doesn't seem to be romantically motivated.

But like Hiroshi, she seems to be hiding in plain sight. Her actions are clear but she's hiding her motivation and seeming to be inconsequential. And like Hiroshi she's manipulating Sai, in subtle ways.

I won't be at all surprised if it turns out that she's the other leader.

7
My money's on Keina (that's the spelling in the subs I'm downloading) being a the ditz.

No harm? Stupid is invulnerable. (I was sure that was a trope)Says odd things that make people go "waitaminute, that makes sense.." Genius Ditz.

I might have come up with more, but I got lost in TvTropes again..

Anyway, I think you're desperately trying to find meaning behind meaningless things. There is no method here....more importantly
Why the hell did Korone fire the rice gun at Sai, Keina, and Junko? Is that what Keina told her to do, thinking the medicine was what Fujiko claimed it was? In that case, why didn't Korone check the medicine before firing it? Did she not know about it? At best this would imply that Keina is not all-knowing or even very bright, since she was setting herself up to be a slave to Fujiko.

Or...
she knew Sai would stop it. Just as the bad guys used the attack in the barracks to get Sai to be cruel and evil with his power, the rice attack made Sai create a shield around him, Kena, and Junko.

If you notice, when Korone fires it, Kena doesn't look worried. (Of course, you could argue she's too stupid to be worried, but I think it's just as likely that she had other reasons for not being worried.)

A few more episodes will tell. But you are right that I'm trying to make this into a decently told story. As I mentioned above, these things could be plot points but they could also just be incompetent story telling.